Almost always it's money, but only because money is a store of material value, and value is a proxy for attachment to the world. Or ... The World as Jesus called it.
The attachment to material things is at it's base clinging to power, and power is mistaken as the equivalent of life. So the deluded Jihadi's believe they will be one with the power of Allah if they follow correctly. They have of course been manipulated by people with attachment to worldly power.
All of it is delusion and in the case of Islam practiced as written, in fact, Godless.
Mankind is always open to delusion if he is Godless, because he replaces reality with his own fantasies - that is, he mistakes the cognitive ramblings that bubble up from his brain as the capital T Truth - rather than the output of a little computer we have for helping us get food and build shelter. Even for those who achieve their money or power, it is living nightmare, impermanent (Ozymandias). But always, it is hard to exactly characterize the reasons, because the reasons are themselves deluded, chaos.
The important point is that - yes it's usually money, often as a proxy for value/power, always as a proxy for worldly life masquerading as eternal life ... but ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS it is pure sincere delusion. And that's why the leadership on the left is scary. They believe their own fantasies, and this is very very very difficult to cure. This believing-my-own-fantasy, It is the root of all suffering on the planet since the beginning of time.
Wait, actually delusion has it's own root -> the dualism that gives rise to the manifest (knowledge of good and evil), which creates the separating of the one into many ... and then various psychotic attachments. It's sounds Buddhist, but it's not. The initial, original sin, out of which all suffering grew - you might call it the spigot of suffering - is the eating of the apple - the so called 'knowledge of good and evil' - stated another way, the initial fantasy, the initial delusion. In God's world, there are no two.
I love the Bible - right about everything, misinterpreted SO often ... most often when man tries to create a governing body around it's study, or reads it for what he wants to hear. The simplicity and non-drama is what hides all the truth.
But while war may be responsible for the killing of the most people, it is not the cause of the most suffering. In fact, if you kill a person, you have ended his ability to suffer ... so ... what's tragic is the length of time and extent of suffering that people endure ... alive ... caused by this delusion. Whether you are in a Nazi concentration camp. or just a child in an emotionally sick family that has its own set of manifestations ... at different times the extent is different ... the cause is the same (delusion) and the affect is the same.
Always it's like the same cookie dough spread everywhere on the planet ... you can cut out whatever shape you want in the cookie dough ... a tree with sprinkles, a star, a Santa, a war, an oppression - the shape doesn't matter ... it tastes like cookie dough.
The Bible nailed it exactly, but perhaps it should have been interpreted (I am NO scholar) ... the Apple of the Delusion of Good and Evil.
Woooo well wondered on that post, time to get on with Saturday. Ordered the e-book! Thanks for posting!
Excellent post, as always, tinyowl. Good read for a Saturday morning!
This is why transcending this world can not be done by a matter of degree - by becoming more good, more holy, more right. All of that only reinforces the cycle, keeps it in place ... although it's not wasted effort because it reduces suffering ... and a being that is suffering less has more awareness left over to actually see the fraud that suffering is.
But ultimately either suffering is renounced or not. Jesus is accepted or not. The Will and Mind are accepted but put in their place or not. It's why mass murderers can be saved in an instant ... because it's not a matter of degree. Just as good men and evil men can both be dead in an instant if each is shot in the head -> so can each be saved in an instant if he sees the truth. It's not a matter of virtue - it's a matter of seeing the truth and then getting it, and then doing what one would do next - accepting it and acting as if it's true.
But very difficult to give up the dramatic story of our lives, our greatness, our smallness, all these attributes we attach to ourselves, everything that we ever did or that happened to us - all illusion and delusion - but letting go of them, feels like death, end of the road. We think of it and .... .... we suffer ... so the final gate is guarded by the biggest manifestation of delusion itself - the suffering caused by the continued not-yet-conscious willingness to fear death, the flip side of the attachment to the manifest world, ultimately - greed for 'our own life.'
Where the Zen Buddhists are helpful is that they expose life in The World for what it is - a fraud, an illusion - they don't call it 'bad' ... they just come right out and point out that it doesn't even exist - It's not even real. There is nothing that can die, because in this world, nothing ever actually lived. Time - illusion. Distance - illusion. Space - illusion.
When all that is put down, there is still something left. There is no word for it, but we make words for it as a tool to communicate. But the word 'hammer' is not the hammer itself. You can't bang in a nail with the word 'hammer' ... and just because you have a thing you call hammer, if it is actually a marshmallow, it will not bang in a nail. So the name doesn't matter.
What's left is what's left. It is what it is. It either is what it actually is, or it isn't. Acting on what it actually is, will bring harmony and tranquility. Acting on anything different will bring chaos and resistance. To further try to force it to be what it isn't is like trying to hammer in a nail with a marshmallow. It would be funny to watch someone doing this, except that we are doing all day long ourselves, and suffering for it.
Whatever it is, this is-ness, it is free of delusion, suffering.
It can only be known after walking though the gate of the suffering of the fear of separation from identification of I with The World. No human acting from the part of himself that was built to keep himself temporally alive would be dumb enough to willingly walk through that gate without faith that this incarnation he calls 'himself' or 'herself' is an illusion, is not the real 'him' or 'her'.
The only reason God's 'ways' seem bizarre is we see Him through a deluded filter. This filter can not be eliminated through wisdom or virtue or will or good deeds.
It must be ultimately be seen for what it is - a fraud - and then shattered and discarded.
In action - it means there is no need to renounce evil and in fact that is an empty gesture because we have no direct connection to Evil. Evil is an effect, not a cause. Evil was never the culprit.
The culprit is suffering, which is our only handle by which to grab delusion in the The World. Delusion is the original sin, but it's built in, permanent. Can't change it.
We think that we must renounce Evil (deeds and thoughts) to eliminate Suffering. It's actually the other way around.
This is why I love atheists ... and was proud to be one in my teens ... they have it exactly, precisely 180 degrees backwards on precisely the ground they debate. They mistake which world is actually the fantasy. It is total, 100% unadulterated identification with a fraud. They are like theatre goers who, returning home, aren't aware not only that the movie-story is over, not real, was never real, but that they were never part of the drama. Their actions now seem psychotic, and they are, except that they believe they are in a move that is still playing.
This is the nature of what plays out and has played out on the stage of mankind, and why history reads like a million year long Halloween slasher movie.
Accepting Christ / dis identifying with the mind made world doesn't add good to one's life. It removes the delusion, and all that's left is the world that God actually created, which IS already Heaven, IS already the Garden.
But getting back to the original post ... that's the cause of War :-)